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Chinese artist creates Corruption Hall of Fame

There’s no shortage of inductees in the corruption-riddled country.

Artist Zhang Bingjian poses before a selection of portraits of corrupt Chinese officials. He and a team of 20 artists have produced close to 1,200 such portraits and there is no end yet in sight. (BILL SCHILLER / TORONTO STAR) | Order this photo

BEIJING — When artist-filmmaker Zhang Bingjian first understood the extent of government corruption in China, he was stunned.

“The chief prosecutor announced that 3,000 officials had been convicted for corruption in a single year,” recalls Zhang. “I remember being shocked, a little angry and then confused.”

His friends, however, scoffed.

“They said, ‘Those are just ‘official’ figures. There’s a lot more than that!’”

And in that moment the seed of an idea was planted, which has blossomed today into the Corruption Hall of Fame, a Zhang Bingjian art installation that so far features 1,200 portraits of corrupt Chinese officials, with no end in sight.

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“You have to call it open-ended,” says the 51-year-old artist, seated in his north Beijing studio on a recent afternoon amid countless portraits of corrupt officials hanging from walls and packed in crates.

“We don’t know yet whether this project will have a happy or a tragic ending,” he says, reflectively.

“For now, some are just calling it: ‘The Hall of Shame.’”

But don’t mistake the colour of the portraits — pink — as any suggestion that the subjects are blushing.

To the contrary, pink is the colour of the 100 yuan bill, the largest denomination in China. It’s the colour of money — what seduced these officials and what binds them together.

No one can overstate the depth, breadth and staying power of official corruption in China.

Minxin Pei, a respected Chinese scholar with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, once estimated that as much as 10 per cent of government spending here is raked off in kickbacks and corruption.

He called corruption “the glue” that keeps the Communist Party together.

Yet, week after week, month after month and year after year, senior party officials never seem to pass a podium without taking the opportunity to officially decry corruption.

Last month, President Hu Jintao — who is also secretary general of the Communist party — chose the organization’s 90th birthday to warn officials, yet again, that the party’s credibility could be undermined if something isn’t done.

“Some officials,” said Hu, “ ... have resorted to deception, violated laws and discipline, and even been involved in corruption.”

That might be putting it mildly, for it’s not just “some” officials, but the very captains of China’s biggest state-owned enterprises who have been caught up to their elbows in the state’s cookie jar.

In one year alone, 2009, the head of state-owned owned oil giant Sinopec, the chief of the National Nuclear Corp. and the president of the holding company that oversees Beijing’s glamorous Capital Airport were all handed death sentences after being caught red-handed embezzling millions.

Now the big question on many minds is whether the former minister of railways, Liu Zhijun, will be next.

“Great Leap Liu,” as he came to be known for leading the runway expansion of China’s high-speed rail system, was removed from his post in February for alleged “severe violation of party discipline.”

Chinese media reports have depicted the ministry as a cauldron of corruption, with allegations that as much as $2.8 billion might have been siphoned off.

Seven other senior officials were also sacked.

Last month, the ministry was all over the news yet again after a tragic accident involving two high-speed trains in which at least 40 people died.

So could “Great Leap Liu” be inducted into the Corruption Hall of Fame?

Only if he is officially convicted, says artist Zhang.

“I’m not the bureau of corruption, not the police, not a court,” he says. “I’m a citizen and an artist.

“But I do feel I have a responsibility to raise my voice, raise questions and record history.”

The notion of a Hall of Fame came to him slowly, he says, striking just the right “cynical” tone he wanted, allowing him to criticize through irony.

He also took pains to adopt production methods that reflected the boom times built on cheap exports during which the officials gorged themselves at public expense.

He hired 20 artists in the southern village of Dafen, known for producing 60 per cent of the world’s oil paintings, and established an assembly line aimed at mass production using cheap materials.

He was thinking more “Wal-Mart” than “master-class,” he says.

“I wanted to paint these officials in a tacky way,” he explains.

Every canvas measures 50 by 60 centimetres, is painted in shades of pink and is produced in assembly line fashion entirely in Dafen.

The spine of each canvas comes with a serial number, the official’s name, his title, his crime and the sentence received.

“It doesn’t matter whether you’ve stolen one yuan or 10 billion yuan,” says Zhang. The common denominator, the great equalizer, is the theft of public funds.

So there on the wall hangs the face of Chen Liangyu, former Communist party boss of Shanghai, once one of China’s mightiest men, who was sentenced to 18 years for embezzling millions.

And not far away is the chiseled face of Ruan Kunhua, a former liquor board official from Anhui province who got 10 years for shaking down citizens for $55,000 in kickbacks.

“The idea,” says Zhang, “is to make people think, why is this happening in China? Why do so many people do it? How do we stop it?”

Last year Zhang hoped to stage a show in Vancouver.

“A friend was keen to organize a show there because the city is such a haven for corrupt Chinese officials,” says Zhang.

But what may have seemed natural in theory appears to have proven too close for comfort in practice.

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